Jim Devine wrote: "The universalization (or rather globalization) of US dollars simply broadens the scope of one kind of money, one that doesn't have the same kind of community-based flavor as HOURS."
But if the value of the dollar is based on non-other than the real value of the US economy (which is, I would argue, certainly impacted by moral and ethical values), then when the dollar is placed in its international market context (when the Fed yells jump and the rest of the world yells back how high?) are not the social values (moral, ethical etc) that shape the US economy also shaping the rest of the world? Also: "So, I see the dollarization of the world as reflecting the imperial reach of the US, its political, military, economic, and financial power." I agree, especially when you take into consideration the following excerpt from David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity: Money, in fact, fuses the political and the economic into a genuine political economy of overwhelming power relations... The common material languages of money and commodities provide a universal basis within market capitalism for linking everyone into an identical system of market valuation and so procuring the reproduction of social life through an objectively grounded system of social bonding (102). Jayson Funke Graduate School of Geography Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610
